66 was born in 1628, of a father whose condition we may infer from his employment, was that of a tinker. Far from concealing it, he says My father's house was of that rank that is meanest and most despised in the land." When he comes to speak of his marriage, he says: "This woman and I came together as poor as might be, not having so much household stuff as a dish or a spoon betwixt us both." Poverty attended him all his life, notwithstanding the great sale of some of his books; and the one-storied house in which he last lived, taken down in 1838, was of the poorest description. He was not pastor at Bedford till 1672, after his long imprisonment; and from the poor people of his small church could have received very little, if anything at all. He did not rush into the ministry, but was incited to it by his brethren, and the more as they perceived his fitness for it. His discourses were so valued and his spirituality so revered, that his ministrations were coveted in all that region; and in the end such a supervision of religious affairs was committed to him that he was known as "Bishop Bunyan." During the protectorate all this passed unquestioned; but no sooner was monarchy restored than those who had been humiliated by "the saints" resolved to make the dissenters feel the return of priestly power. It was for preaching to a small company at a farm-house, in November, 1660, that Bunyan was first arrested by a country magistrate. Forewarned of the intention, and counselled to fly, he walked alone in a field, considering what his duty might be. He came to the conclusion that he ought to show an example of firmness in suffering for the right of preaching God's Word, and returned to the house, saying to himself, "I must do it." So tenderly attached to his family, that parting from them "seemed like pulling the flesh from his bones," he yet said, "I must do it." Greater heroism cannot be found. At any time during twelve years, a promise from him to desist from preaching would have set him free; but he would not give it. Looking back from our own times, we can scarce realize that only for such an act, an Englishman could be thrown into a common jail; much more, could be held there twelve years. Amazing, indeed, it seems that such a lawyer as Sir Matthew Hale, importuned by Bunyan's wife, found no way to deliver him. Twelve years' loss of liberty in the company of felons, in crowded, chill apartments, living on wretched food, liable to insult and cruelty, and uncertain how far the injustice of higher powers might go, this it was to which Bunyan condemned himself. Nine of his books proceeded from the county jail of Bedford, growing out of the sermons he preached to his fellow-prisoners. They were printed in London, for the benefit of his family, whom otherwise he strove to aid by netting a coarse species of lace. The Declaration of Indulgence, proclaimed by Charles, in March, 1672, set Bunyan at liberty once more; and he entered immediately upon his function of preaching in Bedford. But on the accession to power of Danby and his associates, in 1765, the Declaration of Indulgence was withdrawn, and Bunyan was arrested again. This time, however, the jail on Bedford Bridge was his place of detention, three months; and then and there Pil grim's Progress was begun. Thirteen years he survived his final enlargement, preaching and writing all the time, producing in all sixty different publications. Business connected with these carried him often to London, where he made the acquaintance of many eminent dissenters. Chief of these was the illustrious John Owen, vice-chancellor under Cromwell, of the University of Oxford, who told King Charles that he would give all his learning for the tinker's power of touching men's hearts. Among these friends, August 31, 1688, he died, aged sixty, and was buried in Bunhill Fields. John Bunyan is the noblest instance, perhaps the only instance, of a man wholly uneducated (except in the rudiments of learning), rising without foreign aid to the production of a work admired alike by the simplest and the most cultivated reader-the delight of children, and the envy of scholars. Other men, untaught in childhood, have learned to love books passionately, and have climbed the highest steeps of literature; but Bunyan was never a reader. Two books only he carried into Bedford jail to be companions of his imprisonment-the Bible and the Book of Martyrs. When he was visited by a curious inquirer, not long before his death, "his study consisted only of a Bible and a parcel of books, chiefly his own." Bunyan himself says: "My Bible and my concordance are my only library in my writings." Cobbett, alone, with his "perfection of rough Saxon English," can be compared with him. Yet, great as even Milton's glory deserves to be, his fame may not be greater than Bunyan's. The Pilgrim's Progress has been translated into near a hundred languages, and multiplied by millions of copies. Wherever Christianity spreads, that book becomes the comfort of saints and the delight of their children. It is the only allegory that ever succeeded. Hundreds have been written only to become bores. The attempt to find its model or its materials in any that preceded is simply ridiculous. Its originality is as certain as its superiority is unquestionable. As a preacher, Bunyan used chiefly the hortatory style. His lack of discipline made him incapable of the regular development of any topic. But the copious originality of his mind, the lively imagination which found illustrations in the most familiar objects, and the deep experience which he had in the Christian life filled every discourse with pungent expressions, which could not fail to thrill every hearer. He was full of English manliness and good sense; and his intense earnestness kept him from the follies of many theologians and the narrowness of many sects. BOOK NOTICES. ENGLISH HYMNS: Their Authors and History. By Samuel WilloughBY DUFFIELD. Author of The Latin Hymnwriters and their Hymns,' 'The Heavenly Land,'' Warp and Woof: A Book of Verse,' The Burial of the Dead,' etc., etc. Funk & Wagnalls. New York, 1886. Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun, in a letter to the Marquis of Montrose early in the eighteenth century, said: "I knew a very wise man that believed that if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation." If this often-quoted judgment be true as the influence of one class of lyrical poetry upon the life and manners of a people, it must be true to a greater degree, if it be extended to include religious lyrics or hymns. The influence of Rouse's metrical version of the Psalms of David upon the religious, and of consequence, upon the social, intellectual, and political life of Scotland, cannot possibly be estimated too highly. It has been to Scotchmen, not merely an acceptable version of an important portion of Scripture, but that particular part and version of God's Word which has inspired and moulded their lives. It has been their book of intimate devotion, public and private, and thus given character to their religious experience. It has been their liturgy, affording them their habitual vehicle for the expression of their religious affections in their intercourse with God at all times. It has furnished them largely the materials for their theology, and of their proverbial philosophy. There is no parallel in history of one people, being to so great a degree affected by a single collection of songs, sacred or otherwise. On the other hand, the interest attaching to the entire body of Christian hymns existing in the English language, is far more various and extensive if it be less intense. Though not inspired in the sense of being infallible and authoritatively typical, they are, in the most comprehensive sense, the products of inspiration in that they echo all the voices of Biblical Revelation, and at the same time give original expression to the profoundest experiences of the most saintly souls under the leadings of Spirit and Providence of God through all the Christian ages. Neither the completed histories of all philosophical and all theological speculations would give so deep and true a reflection of the real life of the Protestant nations, certainly of the English-speaking nations, as a complete and critical collection of their hymns. The interest in these necessarily insubsequent histories, as well as the bare text cludes their authors, occasions, versions, and itself. Doctor Duffield has accomplished a work of great value worthy of his subject. He possesses and has exercised the taste, tact, learning, religious, feeling, and painstaking diligence, necessary for its adequate treatment. In a large volume of 623 pages, he gives the history with various degrees of fulness of nearly fifteen hundred hymns arranged alphabetically by their first lines. He has availed himself of the most copious and authoritative sources of knowledge accessible on this continent, and has done faithful scholarly work. The book is enriched with a chronological table of English hymn-writers, from Miles Coverdale, 1569, to Francis Butler St. John, 1879, and an index of the authors of the hymns annotated or mentioned in this work. THE BIBLE AN OUTGROWTH OF THEOCRATIC LIFE. By D. W. SIMON. New York: Scribner & Welford. 1886. The amazing recent advance of the physical sciences has, in virtue of their methods, rather than their results, produced a profound impression upon all departments of human thought. In some directions and to a certain extent, the influence has been unsettling and injurious, but, on the whole, it has been a great and permanent advantage. The conception, and even the habitual recognition of the imminence of God in all things and events is not new, as many badly informed impugners of the old theology vainly pretend. It is involved in all forms of the old Grecian philosophy, which has always exerted so much influence over Christian thought, and it has been emphasized in the school of St. Augustine, which has been prevalent throughout the Western Church to the present time. But it is true that it has hitherto been customary to conceive of God's action upon his creatures rather as coming upon them from without, than as inspiring and guiding their own natural powers, and of the effect attributable to him as being brought into existence suddenly, rather than as growing gradually through a process following a recognizable law. Theologians as well as scientists are coming to see that the method of God is always historical, that he brings all things to pass alike in the moral and physical world by a process of genesis, through the coöperation of all natural forces. This is especially recognized as the method by which the entire canon of sacred Scripture and all its constituent parts, were brought into being, not by a single creative act, but by long-continued and widely extended providential process; a providence at once leaving all the human agents free, and at the same time bringing into exercise every form of God's activity, external and internal, natural, gracious, and supernatural, and embracing and controlling to one purpose all the human agents and natural forces immediately or remotely related to the subject. The genesis of Holy Scripture, is a subject which embraces all the antecedent history of the world out of which it sprang. The inspiration of Scripture is, on the other hand, a special subject relating only to the degree of accuracy in stating truth, which the special divine controls in the case of these Scriptures secured and guarantees. This work of Professor Simon, exhibits this view of the genesis of Scripture fairly well. It is sound and truly Christian at the bottom. But the recognition of the historical process by which Scripture was generated, does not, as he appears to think, in the least conflict with the recognition of it both in matter and form as a revelation from God. Nor is there anything in the historical view of the genesis of Scripture, in the least inconsistent with the very highest and strictest view of inspiration ever entertained; an inspiration securing perfect inerrancy, and extending even to the words. THE APOSTOLIC AND POST-APOS TOLIC TIMES; Their Diversity and The point of view defined in the preceding paragraph has necessarily led to a corresponding view as to the graduated delivery of doctrine through a progressive course of revelation running through both Testaments. Systematic theology emphasizing the unity of Scripture as the Word of God exhibits the whole body of revelation as finally delivered in one complete system. But the new method of Biblical theology exhibits the divine truth communicated severally to every one of the sacred writers, in the special form in which he conceives and presents it. The result of which is the apprehension of the actual historical facts of revelation, of the truth revealed, the order of revelation, and the various forms in which it is set forth, and hence the appreciation, before unattainable, of the infinite variety, fulness, and unity of God's revelation of himself, of his works, and of his intentions. The work of Professor Lechler is the ripe fruit of a long and studious life, being a learned, critical, and at the same time judicial and fair exhibition of the true process of the reception and delivery of doctrine during the Apostolic age and immediately after in opposition to the old negative critical school of Baur and his followers and successors. It is a book of great scientific value, and of essentially orthodox conclusions. NATURE AND THE BIBLE: Lectures on the Mosaic History of Creation in its Relation to Natural Science. By Dr. F. H. REUSCH, Professor of Catholic Theology in the University of Bonn. Revised and corrected by the Author. Translated from the fourth edition by KATHLEEN LYTTELTON. Two vols. New York: Scribner & Welford. 1886. That Science and Christian Theology cannot be really at variance is demonstrated by the fact that a work of such scientific knowledge and judicial fairness can proceed from an accredited teacher of the same Church which condemned Galileo. It states fairly and with very competent knowledge the present conclusions of science and the present opinion of orthodox Christians, respectively, as to the facts of nature and as the true teaching of Scripture, as to the Creation of the World, the Origin of Life, the Theory of Descent, the Origin, Original Condition, Unity, and Antiquity of the Human Race. GERMAN PSYCHOLOGY OF TO-DAY. By TH. RIBOT. Translated from the Second French edition by JAMES MARK BALDWIN, late Fellow of Princeton College, with Preface by JAMES MCCOSH, D.D., LL.D. Charles Scribner's Sons. Th. Ribot is a leading representative of the experimental philosophy in France, being Director of the Revue Philosophique and holding a prominent position in the Faculty of the Sorbonne. He is already known to English readers as the author of an interesting history of the Empirical Psychology of Great Britain. The present work is a masterly account of the experimental school of contemporary German psychology. It was founded by Herbart, whose attempt to reduce the laws of mental phenomena to mathematical formula, started inquiry in a new direction. Since Herbart, the Experimental School has developed along two distinct lines. (1) That of Physiological Psy chology, which aims by exact experiments on the brain and nerves to discover and formulate mental laws in physiological terms. (2) That of Psychophysics, which seeks to determine exactly the ratio between sensation and its external cause. The principal workers of this school have been Herbart, Lotze, Helmholz, Wundt, and Lechner. Its main characteristic is the application of mathematics and the rigorous experimental methods of physical science to mental facts. M. Ribot believes that the new method will prove more fruitful than the less exact methods of the old psychology, but thinks it too early, as yet, to predict with certainty what the outcome of the new depenture will be. One fact is beyond question, the new psychology has established itself as a legitimate branch of inquiry. The book is all that could be desired in the way of history and explanation. Mr. Baldwin merits the thanks of the English-reading public for his neat and timely translation. FOUR CENTURIES OF SILENCE; This admirable volume treats of an important but much neglected period of Jewish history. The four centuries from Malachi to Christ mark the decay of the Jewish religion and the expiring struggles of the Jewish national life. But they are also a line of germination and preparation for a new era. During this period the most prominent features of the Jewish life in the time of Christ had their origin. The Old Testament was translated into Greek, the Apocryphal books were composed, the Jewish sects originated, the Sanhedrim was founded, the Rabbinical schools were established and the traditions grew up in connection with them. Alexandria formed a second centre of Jewish life, almost as important as Jerusalem, and under the stimulus of Greek ideas developed a new phase of Judaism. The golden thread that runs through the whole period is the Messianic hope which grows in intensity as the national life declines, until its final expression in the "Voice in the Wilderness" of Christ's immediate forerunner. The author's treatment of his theme merits the highest praise. His book will do much to bridge over a painful gap in Jewish history, and it also shows very clearly how the historical antecedents of Christ, when rightly comprehended, "confirm the faith of those who accept the authority of Scriptures, while they illustrate the wonderful method of Divine Providence in preparing the way for the higher revelations of Christianity." Professor Redford's book will be welcome to all who can appreciate a masterly treatment of a deeply interesting theme. BOOKS RECEIVED, Of which there may be critical notice hereafter. ABBEY.-Poems, pp. 256. Kingston, 1886: Henry Abbey. AMIEL'S JOURNAL.-Translated by Mrs. Humphrey Ward, pp. vii, 483. London, 1885: Macmillan & Co. ARMSTRONG.-The Two Books of Nature and Revelation Collated, pp. 213. New York, 1886: Funk & Wagnalls. BACON.-The Simplicity that is in Christ, PP. 339. New York, 1886: Funk & Wagnalls. Bartlett and PETERS-Scriptures, Hebrew and Christian. Vol. i., pp. 545. New York, 1886: G. P. Putnam's Sons. BURROUGHS.-Signs and Seasons, pp. 289. BRYANT.-Philosophy of Landscape Painting, pp. 282. St. Louis, 1882: The St. Louis News Company. JANES.-Human Psychology, pp. 295. New York, 1886: Baker & Taylor. PORTER.-Kane's Ethics, pp. xviii, 249. Chicago, 1886: S. C. Griggs & Co. ROYCE.-California, pp. 513. Boston, 1886: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. SCOTT.-Sculpture, Renaissance and Modern, pp. 178. New York, 1886: Scribner & Welford. VINCENT.-The Chautauqua Movement. With an introduction by Lewis Miller, pp. ix, 308. Boston, 1886: Chautauqua Press. WHITTIER.-St. Gregory's Guest and Recent Poems, pp. 66. Boston, 1886: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. |